I've pretty much come to the conclusion that if all of human civilization thought a certain way for 99% of our existence worldwide, with the West in the 20th century and beyond thinking something opposite, it's the West in the 20th century that is wrong. Whether peoples and races should be separate, how to defend a nation from invasion, the role of women, the role of marriage, and yes the age of marriage as well like you said. The entire 20th century seems to be mostly the West forgetting lessons that everyone knew for thousands of years, and the 21st century seems to be us dealing with the fallout from that and slowly and painfully having to relearn those lessons.

At this point if someone tells me "My great grandfather thought X, but I think Y" my automatic response without even having to hear more is that your great grandfather was right and you're an idiot.

And every single one of us has great grandparents and great great grandparents and beyond would would look at arranging a marriage between their 15yo daughter and the 21yo son of a tanner or a rancher as not just normal, but not doing it would be weird and unseemly.

It's always interesting how you can still see vestigial remnants of ancient wisdom that have carried over to modern times but without their inherent meaning, like a Chesterton's Fence. Like how Japan calls women who are over 25 "Christmas Cake" because they know that is an age where she is far too old to be a good marriage prospect, or how in a lot of states, they still have laws that say 16 year olds can get married. Because back before the 20th century, when progressivism cut a deadly swath through all of American culture, that was normal and everyone going back 500 generations knew it.

Even shit like brides wearing white to show they're still a pure virgin and fathers giving daughters away at a wedding were from a time when that stuff actually meant something. Now people just look at them like weird quirky traditions, but they came from wiser times when those symbols held real and important meaning. A girl is not supposed to have been even romantically involved with a boy ever before her wedding, and she was property of her father being handed over to be property of her husband. Now the idea that a girl will even make it through high school without learning how to suck dick like a porn star is seen as weird and outdated, and 25 is the age where western women start looking for a husband. Everything is fucking backwards and wrong.

The stuff we think is gross and weird our great grandparents would think are normal and right. And the stuff we think is normal and right our great grandparents would be utterly horrified and disgusted by.

They were right. We are wrong.